In this debut novel set in Wembley, a suburb in London, we meet a teenage librarian, Aleisha performing her summer job duties half-heartedly and an elderly widower, Mukesh who keeps his distance from books. Not the kind of people who run in the same circles, and certainly, not the sort who would have anything in common with each other. Also, lost and found between the pages of a library book, is the List– a catalogue of eight novels with no obvious similarities- written out for no one in particular just in case they need it. For reasons of their own, the protagonists, Aleisha and Mukesh start reading the novels on the list, forming an unexpected bond with books and each other. The Reading List is divided into nine parts – one for each of the books on the list but starting with The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which is not on the list. I can only assume that the author, Sara Nisha Adams wants her readers to perceive the themes that her novel shares with The Time Traveller’s Wife - love, loss and being able to communicate across windows of time. While Niffenegger’s novel carried more concrete and obvious instances of time travel, The Reading List is more about how the list composed in 2017 affects the lives of people even in 2019. And then, there are books – the most efficient, cost-effective and ubiquitous manifestation of time travel, in my opinion. The books on the list are ones that most readers would have read or watched a film/series adaptation of, making it easier for us to connect to how the protagonists are affected by them. Also, quite often we can see a mirroring of circumstances between the books and the real lives of the protagonists even if the literal events in the lives of Aleisha and Mukesh are quite different. Adams taps into the tendency of most readers to relate books and characters to their own lives. We’ve all done it though I found it a tad melodramatic for Mukesh to imagine characters from the books he reads following him around Wembley. Both Aleisha and Mukesh gain depth and the reader’s sympathy as the novel progresses, given the challenges in their lives and their efforts to make the most of them by opening themselves up to change. However, Aleisha’s mother’s illness is left unexplained from start to finish and its lack of specificity makes it seem like something that exists only to further the plot. The secondary characters all seem one-dimensional including Aidan, Aleisha’s long-suffering older brother on whom falls the weight of crushed dreams and growing up before his time. His motivations and desires, which must be powerful given his actions, are ignored and frankly, I found the novel the poorer for it. Aidan is the character I was rooting for, even more than the protagonists and was disappointed with him being treated as a cardboard cut-out and a plot point. Loneliness is the primary theme explored in The Reading List with almost every character experiencing it. And quite often, it is death or the breakdown of human relationships that is the reason for this loneliness but the author also nods in the direction of technology as being a cause of the alienation we feel, whether in the form of cell phones that have replaced conversation or automatic doors that keep people out if they can’t figure out how to work them. The antidote in the novel to this isolation is genuine human connection that can only be achieved by stepping out of one’s comfort zone and limiting belief systems. In that way, the library acts as a third place for many of the novel's characters. Another related idea is how little we know even the people we know and how every person carries within them a whole world of experiences, fears, hopes and insecurities. In terms of style, The Reading List is functional but brings nothing that would make it stand out. Even the characters turn out to be what you'd expect them to be. No major surprises there. Through the length of the novel, the identity of the unknown list-maker is pegged as a mystery and is fairly easy to work out. Though I didn’t mind the predictability as much as I did the book’s excessive dependence on serendipity, especially when it came to a letter written by the unknown list-maker to reach out to someone that they could have delivered this final communique to, in a much more direct and sure-fire fashion. That's my two cents on The Reading List. Now it’s up to you whether or not you put this book on your list.

This is a story about a great plague and how it brought the battle between workers and employers to a head. Every few months, a fresh salvo is fired. And because we live in the times of the mighty hashtag, each of these barrages has a catchy caption. It all began with a little virus in early 2020. Well, not all of it, because workers have been exploited for centuries now, albeit in different ways, in the pursuit of profit. Someone else’s profit, not theirs, silly! I’m not going to explain how the coronavirus pandemic unfolded and the whole business with the numerous lockdowns because even if you were living under a rock this whole time, it was probably with a mask and a bottle of sanitizer. So, you know how it went. The lockdown forced most people to either risk their health and well-being, if they were part of essential services, or work from home with almost no boundaries between work time and rest. And then, there were those who lost their jobs. It was a challenging time to say the least but it was also a time when people got down to thinking about what they wanted from their lives. THE GREAT RESIGNATION Thousands of people realised that they were working jobs that weren’t doing anything for them, and they would much rather use the pandemic to study and change tracks. Or at least, resign from jobs that they’d been working for years just because they were stuck in a toxic comfort zone. I suppose you could say the pandemic jolted them out of their inertia. That’s what led to the Great Resignation which became something of a movement in 2021. It had other aliases like the Big Quit and the Great Reshuffle but they were all about the same things – a pushback against poor working conditions, low pay, skewed work-life balance and a lack of benefits. QUIET QUITTING Not everyone could resign during the Great Resignation even if they wanted to. For most people, resigning and taking a break or studying full-time wasn’t feasible. After all, bills need to be paid and not everyone is sitting on a nest-egg. That’s when Quiet Quitting, the Great Resignation’s passive-aggressive cousin, arrived on the scene. Quiet Quitting is an approach to work where employees meet the stated requirements of their job. Just that. No staying back without getting paid overtime or taking on extra projects. So really speaking, they were performing the duties explicitly stated as their responsibility at an acceptable level of competence (else, they would probably be sacked). At its core, quiet quitting was a sign of the growing disconnect between employees and employers – a lack of understanding for the burnout that many employees were experiencing, a communication gap regarding key areas of responsibility, scarcity of growth opportunities for workers and a dearth of connection and alignment to the organisation’s mission or purpose. When you think about it, if these quiet quitters are still doing their job, it shouldn’t be such a hassle, should it? I mean, it’ll just affect their career prospects because they’ll probably lose out on a promotion to the guy who doesn’t mind working a few hours extra every day. But that’s where reality strikes. The truth is that most jobs today call for employees to push harder to achieve goals that their management sets. Imagine I give you a task that requires about 10-12 hours to complete and then complain that you left it unfinished when you leave at the end of your mandated 8-9 hour shift. What if this is the standard operating procedure? You worked sincerely for the hours that I pay you for and yet, have to explain your choice to have a life beyond work because you’ve finally seen the cracks in the hustle culture. That’s another hashtag, by the way! MOONLIGHTING / FREELANCING / CAREER CUSHIONING Now, I’m not trying to portray quiet quitters as innocents. They aren’t. In fact, no one is. Not in a marketplace as unstable as the one we are in now. Several countries are already in a recession while others are headed that way. The rest have other issues like jobless growth. Quiet quitters know this, and they choose not to be in a position where they are out of work and with no prospects of finding suitable employment. I suppose you could say they agree with the legendary stand-up comedian George Carlin when he said, “Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” That’s how it’s always been. The only difference now is that there’s a hashtag to go with it. And when the air is thick with talk of job cuts, people feel like they need to take precautions. That’s where career cushioning comes in. Career Cushioning is to create a buffer or some kind of protection from a recession or job cuts, if and when they hit us. Actively searching out opportunities and interviewing for them, side gigs or freelancing and moonlighting are some of the means to cushion one’s career. Aside from being an ‘80s era American show starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd, moonlighting is a term that refers to holding multiple jobs without the knowledge or permission of your primary employer. However, to do any or all of these requires time. That’s what quiet quitting provides. The time to improve your own lot instead of solely contributing to your employer’s market share only to be told, at appraisal time, that you haven’t earned 100% of your performance-linked incentive. It's the kind of hustle most corporates don't appreciate. It's not hard to guess why. The American polling company, Gallup polled around 120,000 global employees and arrived at the conclusion that more than half of the world’s employees are engaging in quiet quitting (59%) while only 23% of survey respondents consider themselves to be thriving at work. Given the reasonable sample size, these numbers are pretty concerning. Or at least, should be concerning for the management of every large organisation. Perhaps, they were concerned and had a plan. THE QUIET QUITTING BACKLASH The first part of the plan was unveiled on social media. Sample this. “Quiet quitting isn’t just about quitting on a job, it’s a step toward quitting on life,” wrote Ariana Huffington, one of the founders of HuffPost. For those who are unfamiliar with HuffPost, formerly known as The Huffington Post, let me do the needful. They’re an online news portal and made news when it was reported that they swept under the carpet, allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace against its managing editor, Jimmy Soni. They did, however, post him to New Delhi to launch Huffington Post India soon after. As you can imagine, Jimmy Soni was part of Ariana Huffington’s inner circle. Did I mention that Ms Huffington is also the founder of a health and wellness startup, Thrive Global? And yet she speaks out against people looking to lead healthier lifestyles. Oh, the hypocrisy! All we need now is Jeff Bezos weighing in on worker rights and how his struggling business needs to steal tip money from Amazon delivery workers to keep the lights on. Anyway, the point I am making is that many corporate types unleashed uninspired stereotypes by calling Quiet Quitters ‘lazy’ and ‘entitled’. This strategy works well on contemplative and sober debating grounds like Twitter (now renamed X) and Reddit but something more insidious was required for the real world. QUIET FIRING Corporate top bosses came up with Quiet Firing. Clearly, imagination is not their strong suit. Quiet Firing is a management approach in which managers forego the best practices – such as providing frequent and constructive feedback, mentoring and accountability. Instead, they do the opposite, leaving out-of-favour employees with little choice but to look for a new job. This tactic has the additional benefit of saving on notice period salaries and most crucially, avoiding unflattering media headlines of job cuts. QUIET HIRING Now we come to the bit about keeping the growth and revenue numbers moving in an upward direction even when your workforce is diminished due to quiet quitting and quiet firing. After all, somebody’s got to do the work that isn’t being attended to. One way would be to hire new staff. Sadly, that costs money and because we are in a recession, there are hiring freezes in place in many organizations. What’s the solution? Remember the 41% of global employees that aren’t part of the gang of quiet quitters? Some of those folks can be recruited in an exercise imaginatively named Quiet Hiring. What did I tell you about creativity and corporates? They don’t mix. But you’ve got to give them credit for staying on theme! Anyway, what does quiet hiring mean? Quiet Hiring is when companies move workers from one function or department to another in lieu of hiring new employees. Sometimes they even dangle the promise of a promotion or a pay raise to sweeten the deal. Many people take up the option seeing it as a means to scale the hierarchy or because they’re smart enough to know that rejecting quiet hiring can also turn into quiet firing. For the corporate in question, the cost of training and the pay hike, if and when delivered, is still more cost-effective than hiring a new person. So, that's that. Now you’re up to speed on the quiet clash that has unfolded over the last three years in the hashtag battleground of the timeless war between employers and the employed. I doubt it's done though. Keep watching this space.

As a child, I wore a fair number of sweater sets knitted by my mother. I had a sweater in almost every colour. I loved watching my mother knit. The pattern books were enigmas with codes like p2tog, k4 and yo. To my five-year-old self, it seemed like stuff I would never understand. On a winter day a few years later, when I was 10 or 11, I asked my mother for some leftover wool and a pair of needles. I was given a small ball of thin, mouse-brown yarn with size 12 needles. Mom taught me two stitches – knit and purl. A star stitch scarf from year two or three of Project Knit! I like you, dear reader, and so, I’ll spare you the unabridged account of my miserable first attempt at knitting that winter, except to say that the stitches were being taken off the needle and unravelled into their original form more than anything else. I was a pathetic knitter. What’s worse, I was persistent. Over the next four or five years that small ball of yarn went from mousy brown and thin to mousier greyish-brown and thinner, thanks to my repeated attempts at knitting something. I wasn’t ambitious enough to decide in advance what I was knitting. Instead, I intended to accept graciously whatever chose to reveal itself! By the end of it, that blighted ball of wool had seen more steam (to straighten out kinks) than most saunas! Then some ten or twelve years ago, I decided to try my hand at it again. With the non-judgmental support of YouTube. It was a crisp winter in Delhi and my mother was in town, on her annual visit. I’m sure she was less enthused than I was by my renewed interest in knitting. This time I was a lot more decisive in my plans. I would knit a scarf. After all, even I couldn’t mess that up. So, I thought. I picked a pattern, jotted it down on paper for reference, bought three skeins of midnight blue yarn, a few knitting needles and off I went. It wasn’t a smooth journey. I dislike making mistakes and had chosen a pattern where a mistake would be visible even to an untrained eye. In what was not a surprise to anyone with a grasp of the inevitable, much ripping and restarting ensued. Eventually, I had a muffler to show for it. I promptly gifted it to a friend who appeared, by all accounts, to be pleased with it. And so, almost every winter I pick out a new pattern and knit a scarf. I suppose you could say that knitting is on a seasonal repeat for me like the repeat rows in all knitting patterns. There are howls of frustration when I make a mistake, followed by attempts to rectify the error. If that fails, I head to my mother (if she’s in town), a much better knitter, to help rescue the situation. When that fails too, I always choose to rip the scarf than overlook a dropped stitch or a mismatched design. Knitting, for me, is about focussing enough on something repetitive but constructive so as to reach a mindful state. Like when you’re meditating, focusing on your breath or the sounds outside the window - be it the whistling wind, the patter of rain or even the dull buzz of traffic in the distance. Before you realise it, your mind rises above the thing you’re concentrating on, to a cloud of just being at peace with what you’re doing. That’s why I knit. I can't phrase it better than Elizabeth Zimmerman, the British-born knitting teacher and designer who revolutionized the modern practice of knitting through her books. She said, “Properly practised, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn’t hurt the untroubled spirit either.” The repetitive actions that are part of any handicraft bring about an atmosphere of mindfulness and calm. Everything else is a happy by-product. Whether that be the fact that I can challenge myself, little by little, by trying a slightly more complex pattern each time or that I can gift friends and family a hand-made gift which makes up in charm and warmth what it may lack in finesse. The diagonal lace stitch is not for the faint-hearted beginner! It’s rewarding to create something that you can hold in your hands. We live in a world where many beautiful things have been subsumed into the ether as bits and bytes - letters written on airmail have become emails, books are on kindle and music that used to be on mixed tapes is now part of Spotify playlists. Knitting, pottery or embroidery feel almost anachronistic nowadays. Perhaps, that’s makes them so therapeutic. It's a truism that there is no luxury greater than having something custom-made for you. I would add to that. Custom-made with love is the kind of luxury that isn’t available in stores, making it something to be cherished. And so, I knit.

Set in the hilly environs of an idyllic little village in the Himalayas, this novel sets the stage early. The body of an English activist is found bludgeoned to death in a nearby forest. Clare Watson is a victim with many supporters, quite a few enemies and a secret or two. Udayan Mukherjee introduces us to Neville Wadia, a suave, former policeman who stepped away from the force before he could become Commissioner of Police, and his journalist wife, Shehnaz. Moving away from the noise and dust of the metropolis of Mumbai, they chose to settle into an earthy but cosy cottage adjoining a resort in Birtola, a hamlet in the Himalayas. It is here that the Wadias came in contact with Clare and her husband, Tom, and struck up a friendship. In the opening chapter, a nightmare leads to exposition about Neville’s past. We are told that Neville is haunted by the brutal killing of a young girl he had sworn to protect during his career as a policeman. A Death in the Himalayas is the first book of a series with Neville Wadia as detective but he has to be nudged into investigating this case by Satish Kalia. Satish is the policeman dispatched from New Delhi to lead the investigation because of the victim who was a high-profile author, and a fiery women’s rights and environmental activist. SK, as Satish is referred to in the book, is a long-time admirer of Wadia and asks him to investigate alongside, albeit in an unofficial capacity. That Neville knows and is known by most of the persons of interest is an added advantage to the probe. The line-up of suspects in A Death in the Himalayas is a combination of people with personal and professional grudges against the victim and alibis as wobbly as jelly. The motives also highlight the themes of corruption, the rampant and reckless development of ecologically-delicate mountainous regions and more subtly, the difference in the perspectives of the haves versus the have-nots on such subjects. Another pertinent idea is that of past mistakes or crimes casting long shadows whether in the case of Neville carrying the burden of his failure to keep his word to a witness in an old case or the possible motives for Clare’s murder. As a mystery, it’s sufficiently engaging with an ample array of the genre’s staple, red herrings. But there are certain aspects of the plot that just don’t ring true. For instance, there is a great deal of media interest in the case, we are told. Told, not shown. Never have I witnessed such a timid and rule-abiding set of journalists, that are happy to sit by the side-lines as the investigating agency does its job, as seen in this novel. The author, having been a journalist for many years, would know that. Apart from being more realistic and perhaps furnishing the novel with a plot point or two, it would have injected a sense of urgency into the narrative that is sorely lacking. The momentum seems rather relaxed even after danger is said to be lurking round every corner. The surprisingly lengthy final chapters also curtail the pace of the storytelling. As someone who doesn’t read too many Indian authors mostly because a lot of them have a penchant for needlessly exoticizing the most basic Indian items of clothing or food. I was relieved to not see any of that in A Death in the Himalayas. This may be either because the author isn’t trying to push his novel into the literary fiction genre that usually tends to look westward for approval or because he wanted to write an unapologetic cosy mystery. Either way, this is a novel written for an Indian audience or anyone who has access to Google just in case they aren’t aware of say, the stereotypes associated with certain communities or are unfamiliar with the famed good looks of a yesteryear Indian actor. For me, the absence of gratuitous explanations of dal as a spiced lentil soup were most welcome. All in all, A Death in the Himalayas is a quick and fairly enjoyable read, best served on a cold day with a hot cup of coffee!

Books are perhaps the most efficient, inexpensive and ubiquitous manifestation of time travel. You and I could be sitting next to each other on a park bench, travelling to different worlds and eras, and neither of us would have moved an inch or noticed anything out of the ordinary. Now that’s teleportation without migration! What’s more, we also meet new people in the form of characters who accompany us on our travels, sometimes imbuing our impressions in colours from their own palettes. For instance, we see Pip’s world through his eyes in Great Expectations, making him both the protagonist of the story and our guide. But our tourism of different ages and worlds is not limited to first person narratives. It works even if the narrator speaks in the third person, is sarcastic or given to flights of fancy. A photograph, a video clip or film can also take us back in time but books have the added element of individual imagination that makes the trip more personal. Anyone who ever imagined what a character looks like; the eeriness of a crooked, haunted house or the sound of a dragon's roar can vouch for this. However, what is essential to this form of travel is atmosphere and context. Without them, your experience isn’t likely to be immersive. That’s something I learnt in college, majoring in English literature. It wasn’t enough to read the novel, poem or play. That was the bare minimum. To acquaint oneself with the social, political and economic happenings of the time was crucial to gain a better understanding of what one was reading. In fact, that’s a good thing to remember even for the times we live in– when a tweet can get one cancelled and reactions go viral in a matter of minutes. All this promptness is all very well but to be cognizant of context is crucial to understanding almost anything. This is where books can help. Reading is essentially meditative. To read with the benefit of context allows you to see more deeply and have empathy for what people in times different from our own have been through. Sure, we can laugh or turn up our noses safe in the false belief that we would’ve known and done better. Perhaps. But most likely, not. I believe it is a rare person indeed who would admit that they would’ve been on the wrong side of history had they lived in another time. Speaking of another time, rereading a book can also be a delicious experience. Like indulging in a favourite comfort food like a chicken potpie. You can count on it to soothe you after a long day or be the please-all, fail-safe option for a Sunday lunch. Sadly, in the case of some of my favourite books, I don’t recall my first impressions but can safely say that they were probably different from what I think of them now. Probably because I have changed. Even if the book remains the same. I remember reading Antoine de Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince, for the first time, as a teenager. My father had recommended it. I liked the whimsical story-telling and the charming characters, especially the protagonist and his friends on Earth – the pilot and the fox. Over the years, I’ve reread it a couple of times, discovering new layers and meaning in its observations. You could say that the Little Prince allowed me to accompany him not only to the planets he visited but also my own past self. Like the author Celeste Ng puts it, “The story is truly finished – and meaning is made – not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters.” In that sense, every reader brings their own story to the page just as the writer unfurls their tale. If you don’t see it, you haven’t looked closely enough at the blank spaces between the lines on the page. Somewhere in the confluence of the two is the world of words. And so, perhaps books aren’t just a means to travel through time. They’re also a portal into a different universe, created each time someone cracks open a book. Anyway, I got to go now. There’s a haunted ship, the world’s greatest detective and a few thousand damned souls waiting for me in the year 1634. See you when I return from my travels.

The words taciturn and grumpy seem almost pleasant when compared to Ove – the protagonist of this novel. He is the sort of person who seems older than his 59 years owing to his rigidity regarding fairly pointless rules and a blanket animosity toward the rest of the planet. He decides to end his life because he no longer sees any purpose in living on. Ove has a plan and the tools to achieve it. A serendipitous interruption caused by a couple moving into the neighbourhood ruins his design. For the next few days, his meticulous plans to join his wife in death are stymied by some or the other interference. The common elements in all these incidents are his grouchiness combined with an inability to walk away from people he can help. Of course, he doesn’t cooperate graciously but he does lend a hand anyway. A Man called Ove is a book more about peeling away the layers of its protagonist rather than just the events that take place at this stage in his life. Through flashbacks, Backman takes the reader through Ove’s life to show us not only what he is but also why. That’s when we begin to understand his loyalty, his pride in being self-sufficient, his devotion to rules and regulations and his dislike for new-fangled ideas and wastefulness. One of the recurring themes in A Man called Ove is building and fixing things – something of a male preserve in the book. It also fits in with Ove’s idea of masculinity – reserved, dedicated, utilitarian and reliable. The new neighbour also known as the Lanky One, the overweight young man next door, Jimmy and the BMW-driving neighbour, Anders act as foils to Ove. And yet, by the end of the story, both Ove and the reader realise that they too have some useful skills and more importantly, their hearts at the right place. Looking beyond the exterior of a person into their core – seeing their heartaches, weaknesses, fears, secret desires and hopes is another vital theme of the novel. To be truly seen is the gift that Ove’s late wife, Sonja bestowed on him. She’s described as “all the colours” in contrast to his black and white and yet she sees in him, what we as readers also see by the end of the book – a generosity of spirit and a goodness that is rare in this day and age. One of my peeves with this book is its somewhat implausible plot points especially when it comes to neighbours who barge in at all times of day. I’m not sure that’s believable given the curmudgeon Ove is. The other aspect that felt overdone were the similes. I understand that similes and metaphors can make things, especially intangible concepts such as expressions and feelings, easier to imagine and therefore relatable. They’re also fun to read especially when they are as fresh and inventive as Fredrik Backman’s comparisons. However, if a reader were to take a sip of water every time the author uses a simile, I guarantee they would be well-hydrated in a couple of chapters. That, I believe, is an excessive use of the literary tool. Nonetheless, A Man called Ove is a heartwarming book that reaffirms an inescapable truth of the human condition that there are few things more life-affirming and essential than the belief that one is loved and needed. Everything else is negotiable. Note: The Tom Hanks starrer A Man called Otto that dropped on Netflix recently is an adaptation of this novel.

In Five Years is a book about friendship, destiny and our plans for our lives. Published in 2020 – a year when the pandemic derailed many a plan, it couldn’t have been timed better to fit the presiding mood of unpredictability. It’s a quick, light read. However, if you’re looking for romance with a dash of prophecy, this is not it. Stop reading now and cancel that order from Amazon! In Five Years is set in New York. It is obvious that the author has lived there given the specificity of her locations. The protagonists’ homes and workplaces signify status and upward mobility. The main characters are childhood friends who are polar opposites in personality and life choices. The rational, control-freak corporate lawyer, Dannie prefers the “black and white terms” of contracts over displays of bravado in courtrooms. This is a character who has a specific breakfast marked out for days when she needs to feel like a winner. We get it. Dannie, the character from whose point of view we see the story, likes things planned and finessed to within an inch of their lives. In the first chapter, we see that she lives by a timeline, a set blueprint and David, her boyfriend is willing to play along. The other major character in the novel is her best friend Bella, who with her fairy tale name is the quintessential emotionally-damaged but intuitively-grounded, float-with-the-wind, flaky artist (who is also a trust fund baby of indifferent and largely absent parents). She frequently jets off to faraway locales at a moment’s notice. Oh, well. To say that this is a trope that’s getting predictable would be… well, predictable. The Firefly Lane series by Kristin Hannah had a similar dynamic as does the show Gilmore Girls (which I’ve only watched snippets of, but know that it features a mother-daughter relationship that feels more like a friendship between two women with contrasting personalities and a caffeine addiction). The genre of women’s fiction is somewhat amorphous and defined often both by its readership as well its content. To the best of my understanding, the defining characteristic of the genre is that the equation between two or more female characters rather than, say the factors opposing a romantic match, is usually the main source of conflict in the plot. In Five Years delivers partially on that front but the contrast between the protagonists is too on the nose and their friendship doesn't feel grounded. The idea of Dannie’s dream featuring a life quite different from the one she has planned is an interesting premise. This dream, for the convenience of plot comes with a five-year timeline and is the inciting incident that sets the ball rolling. This starting point coupled with the eventual real-life roll out of this 'dream', five years in the future and in the penultimate chapter of the book, act as a frame for the story. The point that context is crucial to understanding events in their true light is well-made. The rest of it was a let-down in terms of narration, characterisation and the frankly, the conclusion. The supporting characters - David, Aaron, Morgan and Ariel lack depth and flesh-and-blood motivations. We never get to see what makes them stick around in certain circumstances or leave in other situations. Completely lacking even that most basic level of agency that is usually accorded to minor characters, they appear to populate the world of this novel only to provide plot points and create a sense of the protagonists having other people in their lives. Perhaps Morgan and Ariel, being a gay couple, are also a token nod to inclusivity. What makes it odder still is that being close friends of both Dannie and Bella and living in the same city, they barely make an appearance post the mid-point of the story. Not even to support their friends during a major crisis. Apart from this, there is the sub-plot of Dannie’s lawyerly work which also pushes her eventually to trust her instincts instead of only the letter of the law. This dovetails neatly with what is missing in her personal life as well. This tying up of loose ends so perfectly into one tidy bow robs the story of anything resembling the messiness and crossed lines of real life. Overall, it's a breezy read but in my opinion, it flubs its chance of being a touching story about the constancy, love and insight it takes to make a lifelong friendship.

In Six Weeks to Live, Catherine McKenzie introduces us to 48-year-old Jennifer who is diagnosed with brain cancer and told she has six weeks to live. That’s chapter one. Chapter two has her discovering, while still in her car after the doctor’s appointment, that she has been a victim of lead poisoning. Understandably, she wants to figure out the identity of the would-be murderer. This gives us a whodunnit with a built-in ticking clock. The first two chapters are written in first person from Jennifer’s point of view. The intimacy of this point of view lets the readers see and experience events in Jennifer's life as she does. It’s that very closeness that made her unrelatable and unreliable to me. That’s odd, I know. More on that later. The later chapters show the readers the individual perspectives of Jennifer’s 25-year-old triplet daughters, Aline, Emily and Miranda. These are written in third person resulting in a greater psychic distance between the reader and the triplets unlike the immediacy we have with Jennifer. The other major character in the mix is Jake, Jennifer’s lawyer ex-husband who has been pleading with her for a divorce for about two years. He doesn’t get his own chapters. They are all suspects in Jennifer’s poisoning but I surmise the author was counting on our collective bias gleaned from true crime novels, police procedurals and legal dramas to kick in. Those are the bare bones of the plot. What the novel is really about are things that hide in plain sight behind a sunny façade. Like the book itself, which is a whodunnit that cracks open to reveal a family drama at its core, to show us the many little lies behind the perfect white-toothed smiles of the seemingly close-knit Gagnon family. McKenzie weaves in flashbacks that show us the girls’ childhood and how each of them views it differently. I was reminded of the immortal opening line of Leo Tolstoy’s opus, Anna Karenina – "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The idea of truth being both subjective and more importantly, separate from what it appears to be at first glance is a theme running through the book. A poignant symbol of it are the triplets themselves because Aline and Miranda are identical twins ensconced within their larger identity of being triplets with Emily being the fraternal triplet, if you will. Catherine McKenzie explores themes of family, trust and the unintended and long-lasting perniciousness of lies in Six Weeks to Live. As a thriller, I’m afraid it lags in the middle with not enough happening to maintain the pace expected of a whodunnit. Neither does it have the urgency expected of a dying woman with only weeks to live on a quest to avenge her own murder. The ending was somewhat predictable too, in my opinion. However, the aspect that left me absolutely cold were the characters. Frankly, none of them are particularly likable, not even Jennifer, the dying and wronged protagonist with the marked advantage of being given a first person narrative. As mentioned in the beginning, I found Jennifer being a first person narrator a hindrance to trusting her. This is ironic because as a POV character we are privy to her thoughts or at least should be. And yet, there is a sense that she’s holding out on us. That’s what made her unreliable and ultimately not someone I would root for. I’m all for unreliable narrators and their ilk but to expect the reader to sympathise with them while they play the victim requires more nuanced characterisation. The rest of the characters too seem like stereotypes with lives that fit into neat, corresponding moulds – Emily the organised soccer mom, Aline the Type-A career woman and Miranda the flaky floater without a mind of her own. None of them feel like real people. Creating a kind of circle of causality, Catherine McKenzie begins and ends her book with someone apologising to the protagonist. Figuring out who they are and what they are asking forgiveness for requires you to read the book. Just don’t go in expecting too much.